It feels odd saying this about an album that is only two years old, but Morir y Renacer really feels like a record of its time, a capsule of styles and dissident exposition that were seemingly all-consuming at the time they were recorded but now represent a distant memory sprouting in a spoiled Eden. For whatever reason, there were a lot of groups combining cumbia and post-punk in very dark and interesting ways at the outset of this decade- it was just part of the zeitgeist for whatever reason, and Conjunto Primitivo gave us probably one of the most haunting and compelling examples to speculate up through the midwest's club scene. Released as the final album from now-defunct experimental dance label Chicago Research (who I interviewed just as they were winding down), this fascinating endeavor has the esoteric magnificence of a carnivorous flower, watered in quicksilver, which only blooms in under the gaze of a full moon. Ana Belén García-Higgins plaintively affected and chillingly canorous voice feels like it is reaching up from the still waters of an ancient cenote to gently grasp you by the throat and pull you over the rim of her pitted prison in order to drag you into the watery depths of the underworld. Her partner in this fearsome ritual is Cesar Robles Santacruz, whose electronic arrangments, are a practiced display of disquieting restraint, seemingly designed to slowly massage an unnatural life back into the dead, provoking them to dance in thrilling jubilee for as long as their rotten limbs will carry the rhythmic jolts of their tattered, willowy carcasses. Minimalist in approach and maximalist in impact, Morir y Renacer is a freeze frame, a lateral siloing of sound and spiritual conditioning that rests on a moment of teetering tension, a suspended gesture implying an impending collapse, lingering in a barren eternity before tumbling into the abyss.
* In March I am writing an album review every day inspired by a different color. Today's color is pattens blue, a color that I associate with fading memories and the chattering ghosts of past lives.
